Friday, September 21, 2012

This Day in History: Sep 21, 1866: H.G. Wells is born

H.G. Wells, pioneer of science fiction, is born on this day in Bromley, England.
Wells
was born near London and received a scholarship to the Normal School of
Science in London. After school, he worked as a draper's apprentice and
bookkeeper before becoming a freelance writer. His lively treatment of
scientific topics quickly brought him success as a writer.

In 1895, he published his classic novel The Time Machine, about a man who journeys to the future. The book was a success, as were his subsequent books The Invisible Man (1897) and The War of the Worlds (1898).

Passionately
concerned about the fate of humanity, Wells joined the socialist Fabian
Society but quit after a quarrel with George Bernard Shaw, another
prominent member. He was involved romantically for several years with
Dorothy Richardson, pioneer of stream-of-consciousness writing. In 1912,
the 19-year-old writer Rebecca West reviewed his book Marriage,
calling him "The Old Maid among novelists." He asked to meet her, and
the two soon embarked on an affair that lasted 10 years and produced one
son, Anthony. Wells died in 1946.

Herbert George Wells, the son of an unsuccessful tradesman, was born in Bromley
on 21st September, 1866. After a basic education at a local school,
Wells was apprenticed as a draper. Wells disliked the work and in 1883
became a pupil-teacher at Midhurst Grammar School.

While at Midhurst Wells won a scholarship to the School of Science where he was taught biology by T. H. Huxley.
Wells found Huxley an inspiring teacher and as a result developed a
strong interest in evolution. Wells founded and edited the Science
Schools Journal while at university. Wells was disappointing with the
teaching he received in the second year and so in 1887 he left without
obtaining a degree.

Once a member of the Fabian Society,
Wells tried to change it. Rather than a small group of intellectuals
discussing socialist reform, Wells thought that it should be a large
pressure group agitating for change. When the existing leadership
resisted these ideas, Wells attempted to gain control of the
organisation. Wells managed to gain election to the Fabian Society's
Executive Committee but gained little support for change from the rest
of the group.

In 1904 Beatrice Webb
wrote: "We had a couple of days with H. G. Wells and his wife at
Sandgate, and they are returning the visit here. We like him very much -
he is absolutely genuine and full of inventiveness, a speculator in
ideas, somewhat of a gambler but perfectly aware that his hypotheses are
not verified. In one sense he is a romancer spoilt by romancing, but in
the present stage of sociology he is useful to gradgrinds like
ourselves in supplying us with loose generalizations which we can use as
instruments of research."

Wells resigned from the Fabian Society in 1908 but continued to be active in the campaign for socialism. His book A Modern Utopia
expressed a desire for a society that was run and organised by
humanistic and well-educated people. Wells, who was extremely critical
of the role that privilege and hereditary factors in capitalist society
and in his utopia, people gain power as a result of their intelligence
and training.

Wells argued: "The Socialist (asks) what freedom is
there today for the vast majority of mankind? They are free to do
nothing but work for a bare subsistence all their lives, they may not go
freely about the earth even, but are prosecuted for trespassing upon
the health-giving breast of our universal mother. Consider the clerks
and girls who hurry to their work of a morning across Brooklyn Bridge in
New York, or Hungerford Bridge in London; go and see them, study their
faces. They are free, with a freedom Socialism would destroy.

Consider
the poor painted girls who pursue bread with nameless indignities
through our streets at night. They are free by the current standard. And
the poor half-starved wretches struggling with the impossible stint of
oakum in a casual ward, they too are free! The nimble footman is free,
the crushed porter between the trucks is free, the woman in the mill,
the child in the mine. Ask them! They will tell you how free they are."

In his early scientific writings Wells predicted the invention of
modern weapons such as the tank and the atom bomb. He was therefore
horrified by the outbreak of the First World War.
Unlike many socialists, he supported Britain's involvement in the war,
however, he believed politicians should use this opportunity to create a
new world order.

Wells was encouraged by the news of the
communist revolution in Russia. He visited the country and lectured
Lenin and Trotsky on how they should run their country. Wells was
disillusioned by what he saw in Russia and in 1920 Wells published The Outline of History.
The book described human history since the earliest times and attempted
to show how society had evolved to the present state. Wells illustrated
the triumphs and failures and pointed out the dangers that faced the
human race. The main theme of the book was that the world would be saved
by education and not by revolution.

Wells book was widely discussed and the abridged version, A Short History of the World,
published in 1922, sold in large numbers. Wells was now considered to
be one of the world's most important political thinkers and during the
1920s and 30s he was in great demand as a contributor to newspapers and
journals. In his books and articles H. G. Wells argued that society had
reached the stage where it needed world government and strongly
supported the League of Nations that was established after the First World War.
Wells also stressed that society needed to establish structures that
ensured that the most intelligent gained power. Some socialists
criticised Wells claiming that he was now preaching a form of elitism.

Some socialists became critical of his attitude towards the Great Depression: The left-wing MP Jennie Lee
wrote about a meeting with Wells in 1929: "H. G. Wells was one of the
bright guiding stars of my youth. I read avidly everything he wrote.
That day in Parliament there had been a violent debate about all the
issues that meant most to me - the cruelty and indignities of the Means
Test, failure to get on with the building of urgently needed houses,
schools and hospitals, and all this against a background of hundreds of
thousands of unemployed building workers. I arrived at Great College
Street brimming over with indignation. H. G. Wells brushed aside
anything I tried to say, returning obsessively to the teaching of
history in schools. We began glaring at one another with growing
hostility. So this was H. G. Wells, this dumpy little man with the
squeaky voice, totally indifferent to the problems that concerned the
great mass of ordinary people."

In his novel The Shape of Things to Come
published in 1933, Wells describes a world that had been devastated by
decades of war and was now being rebuilt by the use of humanistic
technology. David Low
pointed out: "H. G. Wells had the rare ability to make himself clear,
to make difficult ideas assimilable, to excite curiosity and to prompt
enquiry. Scientist, novelist, sociologist, prophet - but primarily the
co-ordinating link between all these and the ordinary man, who, without
his like, must live forever in darkness of mind."

In 1934 Wells visited the Soviet Union and the United States. Although Wells clearly preferred what Roosevelt was trying to do, some people believed he was far too sympathetic to Joseph Stalin. One of his main critics was his old adversary at the Fabian Society, the successful writer, George Bernard Shaw.
Wells was appalled by the outbreak of the Second World War
and wrote extensively about the need to make sure that we used the
conflict to establish a new, rational world order. Herbert George Wells
died on 13th August, 1946, while working on a project that dealt with
the dangers of nuclear war.

Margaret Cole
later wrote: "I was just one of the many young who over three
generations at least took their hope of the world from the vivid,
many-gifted, generous, cantankerous personality, and accepted, not
merely once but again and again over forty years, his eager conviction
that the ideal of Socialism, which included world government, the
abolition of all authority not based on reason, and of all inequality
based on prejudice or privilege of any kind, of complete freedom of
association, speech and movement, and of an immense increase of human
welfare and material resources achieved by all-wise non-profit-making
organisation of economic life, both could and would save humanity within
a measurable space of time. Only at the very end, when he was all but
on his death-bed, did H. G. Wells give up hoping for humanity."